Those familiar with cooking know that, especially when cooking foods in vessels such as pots or pans at a higher temperature, the contents of a vessel being cooked may splatter and mess the area around the vessel. This commonly occurs, for example, when cooking bacon in a frying pan or making a sauce in a pot, where the sizzling bacon grease or boiling sauce is known to splatter when the pan or pot is not covered.
For certain methods of food preparation, like frying and sautéing, the heated vessel should not be covered with a lid since it would trap the steam and yield a different result. This has led to the development of splatter screens which are often made of a frame with a screen or a membrane with small holes to allow steam to escape while limiting splatter from the vessel contents.
An example of an early splatter screen can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 2,498,534. The splatter screen described there has a handle attached to an outer ring or frame and a shield or screen disposed within the ring.
Several variations to the splatter screen have been developed over the years, including the adaption of a splatter screen without a handle. One such adaptation is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,770,389, which is formed more as a cover. This patent describes a splatter screen that includes two sections, each accounting for substantially one half of the cover, that that either fold, rotate or slide on one another to open the splatter screen to the contents without removing the screen from the vessel.
A similar adaptation in the prior art is a splatter screen without a handle but having two substantially equal halves separated by a hinge down the middle. One side of the splatter screen is shown as having a flat surface and the other side having an undulating surface. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. D621,217.
Notwithstanding the above, there is a need for a better splatter screen, which can be stored in smaller spaces and can allow the user to check on the contents of the vessel without removing the entire splatter screen.